Disney Is Selling a Town It Built to Reflect the Past

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

Published: January 16, 2004

CELEBRATION, Fla., Jan. 12 — The gossip along this town's determinedly quaint main drag these days is bigger than the typical "who left their trash can by the curb," or even "who added on to their house without permission."

The Walt Disney Company, which built Celebration just outside the Walt Disney World gates in the 1990's and has been the planned community's benefactor and strict parent, put the town center on the market last June. The pastel-colored shops and restaurants that make up Celebration's signature squeaky-clean vista will soon change hands, and as a sale is negotiated in secret, residents and business owners are wondering who will take Disney's place, and what will life be like without the Mouse.

Officials at Disney's development arm here, the Celebration Company, said they were negotiating with a potential buyer and hoped to announce a sale as soon as next week. They would not identify the buyer of the town center, which includes 16 retail shops, 6 restaurants, 105 apartments and 94,000 square feet of office space. Disney, which will still own much of the undeveloped land here, will continue developing commercial property closer to the highways.

The impending sale is one of several recent steps by Disney to scale back its presence in the town. In September, the Celebration Company sold the town golf course to C. S. Golf Partners L.L.C., for $6.5 million. That same month, residents were given a 3-to-2 majority on the homeowners' association board, which Disney had dominated.

None of this is shocking, since Disney always planned to pull out of the downtown and give up control of the association once a certain number of residential lots were sold. Yet many residents and business owners see the changes as a crossroad for Celebration, which Disney marketed as "a place that takes you back to that time of innocence," as an early brochure put it.

Some, like Pam Shaw, who moved here with her husband and two sons in 1999 because "it sounded like paradise," think Disney's waning involvement bodes well.

"I moved here because I loved Disney — we had such blind faith," said Mrs. Shaw, treasurer of the association board. "But this was just a business venture for them, and now it's up to us. Their success is based on financials, and ours is going to be more, `Are you proud to live here? Do you love your life here?' "

Others, like David Manuchia, who owns two downtown restaurants, said they feared that the town might not be as well-oiled a machine without Disney. "There are enough trash cans, the streets are cleaned, the traffic is orderly," Mr. Manuchia said, citing how meticulous the Celebration Company has been, about special events in particular. "There is probably nobody better than Disney at making things run smoothly."

When Celebration opened its doors in 1996, it was one of the first master-planned communities modeled on traditional small towns, with houses that looked old-fashioned, all within walking distance of a central business district. The idea, which has been copied around the country under what is called New Urbanism, was to foster a sense of small-town community that suburban sprawl had failed to achieve.

With fine-tuned ideas about how the town should look, the Celebration Company drew up a contract of rules and covenants that every homeowner had to abide by. The regulations govern the appearance of houses and lawns, from front-yard shrub selection to curtain color. There were also rules for the commercial district, including one that let the Celebration Company decide which businesses came to town.

There is no big-box shopping center here, nor a book, hardware or video store. There are Italian, Japanese and Spanish restaurants as well as several clothing boutiques, a high-end doll shop, a jeweler and a few upscale gift shops.

Vicki Puntonet, owner of the Village Mercantile, said that a lot of her customers were tourists and that many residents did the bulk of their shopping outside Celebration.

An obvious question is how much the town center's face will change once Disney is no longer the arbiter of who can set up shop there. Will a Pottery Barn or Gap pop up? A Taco Bell or Chuck E. Cheese?

Just as important, some residents said, is whether the downtown's new owner will preserve events that have become traditions, like sidewalk sales and the fake leaves and snow that fall on Market Street (blown from machines attached to the street lamps) in October and December.

Perry Reader, president of the Celebration Company, said that "because of our concern over the legacy" of Disney, any sale agreement would ensure that the downtown was not drastically altered, and would give Disney a say in any major changes.

"Our concern is that what's done here is thought out and well planned," Mr. Reader said. "That doesn't mean it has to be exactly identical."

Asked about the likelihood of big-name chains moving in, Mr. Reader said many would choose not to because Celebration was too small. But "we haven't necessarily tried to keep them out," he added.

One thing residents worry about is the town's financial future. That Celebration had a bustling business district from the start is perhaps the clearest evidence of the muscle Disney put behind the town. Charles Bohl, director of the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami, said most developers of planned communities waited to build a town center until there were enough residents to ensure its financial success.

Having a downtown from the start may have helped Disney find enormous success selling houses in Celebration: it has sold over $600 million worth, with the average house costing more than $300,000. Although Disney originally said the population could reach 20,000, it decided later that 12,000 was more appropriate. The population is now about 8,000.

The homeowners' board took a survey last fall to see what residents wanted for Celebration when it came under their control. The priority was "consistent enforcement" of the architectural guidelines and other rules governing the appearance of the town.

"There's a feeling that when Disney leaves, all of the sudden the town is going to go to pot," Mrs. Shaw said, "and that's just not the case."

Indeed, there is eagerness here to prove that Celebration does not need Disney to thrive.

"We're not going to use the brochures we were given years ago as the blueprint for what we can become," said Dick Quinn, a college instructor and resident. "The philosophical presence of Disney has been supplanted by the philosophical presence of this community."